Android 12 has brought a huge overhaul to the main UI, and thanks to the Material You element, it will start theme in your favourite Android apps too, and because the ball is already rolling, you might want to try some of the styles in our first volume of Material You Themed Popular Apps. This article will show you a small selection of Material You Themed Popular Apps.
Material You Themed Popular Apps
Just recapping them, Material You is basically Google’s way of creating an interface; it is almost fully modified based upon things such as your wallpaper; instead of just app-specific themes like dark and light mode, almost everything is tuned as a result of this.
At this early stage, not every app we are about to tell you will outright your wallpaper or system theme, but we spotted several first-party and third-party apps that take on aspects of Material You Theme, such as using dynamic color with two apps with full apps redesigns including icons.
We expect all of Google’s major first-party apps and plenty of major third-party offerings to support the Material You Theme App. All of the changes will usually rely on running at least Android 12 on your device.
Repainter
Third-party app Repainter takes the customization step a further, and we have spent a little time with this app to work out if it is worth a look if you want a little extra control over your smartphone setup. Usually, you can not deeply customize things such as fun icon shape and the system color accenting. With the Repainter, you can take care of the color settings and customize your phone running Android 12.
It is not difficult to use, but there are a few hoops that you will have to jump through to get the excellent customization option working correctly on your phone. Repainter allows you to tune and customize the wider dynamic theme settings within Android 12.
One of the Material You Themed Popular Apps is Repainter, and it lets you even use a hex code color picker if you want precise tuning of the colors to suit your phone, and this opens up some extreme theme experimentation. There is some transparency here too as when using wallpaper-based colors; you can see just what hues have been extracted from your device background.
Places you will instantly notice changes include the notification shade toggles, the lock screen, clock and even widget color schemes. If you want added customization something that Google has seemingly reduced within Android in recent years, Repainter is a useful tool that does help you make more customization.
Chrome Canary
So, do not confuse Chrome with Chrome Canary, which is the bleeding edge of Google’s web browser but is distilled down for a mobile phone. At the forefront of Chrome Canary is the first of Google’s browser apps to adopt any proper material you are theming, at least as far as we have seen.
Now there are some caveats; as firstly, this relies heavily upon having a few Chrome flags enabled; the dynamic dash color dash Android flag only makes some modest changes to the settings page, that is it, but you may see some color tweaks to the address bar when using the autocomplete feature, for instance, the highlight color of the autocomplete should follow the primary color from your current device theme based on your wallpaper.
Gboard
Rolling out to a small portion of users, it proves to be a pivotal app to adopt in Material You Theme, as it is one of the most popular keyboard options on the Android platform. These changes are quite substantial but most visible when your device is in the light mode as the key borders, keyboard and accenting adopt your wallpaper or device’s colors.
Many of the redesign is also dependent on whether you have keyboards enabled, as the bulk of the character keys are themed while special character buttons are shaped and colored for greater prominence.
Files by Google
The files by Google App have also been the receiving end of a very light material you redesigned, with the most noticeable change being the bottom navigation bar previously you would know which tab was being selected because it was shaded blue, but, in the new design, a pill shape surrounds the icon of the selected tab, the bar itself also now has a light shade of blue versus the white that it used to be.
Tasker
One of the most popular third-party automation apps also now supports Material You for the app itself, and you are enabled to use the theming settings in your own project. Tasker has made this available and it just requires a switch to be set to Material You on the preferences section. Especially for your own projects, you can use the action of the material color as you deem appropriate to give things a theme based upon device wallpaper.
Sleep as Android
The last one we will talk about is very popular on the broader community and turns your phone into a sleep tracker of sorts. It is almost completely Material You styled too as of the latest update. When running the Android, it reacts to your preset wallpaper, but currently only themes a sleep tracking app based upon one key color in your wallpaper itself.
Conclusion
All in all, the number of choices, be that first-party or third-party is not exactly deep regarding Material You Themed Popular Apps, but we are likely to see a massive volume of applications steadily start to support material you fully over the coming months. What is your current favorite among these apps, and what are you excited to see? If you want to customize your home screen too, we shared Top Home Screen Customization Tweaks for Android in our previous article.
